Ninety-five percent of human history consists of hunter-gathering. Although hunter-gatherers hunted, they acknowledged the wrongfulness of taking another animal’s life by apologizing to their prey and thanking it. Hunter-gatherers lived close to nature – indeed, did not distinguish themselves from other animals or from nature generally – in small nomadic groups in complete equality. James Serpell argues that hunter-gatherers lived better lives than the early cultivators and that humans were driven to the more difficult agrarian way of life mainly because of climate change. He describes the move from hunting and gathering to cultivation as a fall from grace.
Since the advent of agricultural and, even more so, industrial civilization, hunting has been a marginal part of human life, except within the communities that continued the hunter-gatherer way of life. It has become in civilized societies a pursuit of pleasure, status and prestige; in the Middle Ages, hunting was a royal and aristocratic prerogative. Hunting was one way amongst many of asserting hierarchy and social inequality. Rulers rode on horseback, hunted and waged war. Peasants labored in the fields, went on foot and paid taxes. Rulers ate meat (of all kinds) whereas the ruled ate bread. In the colonial era, hunting was an assertion of colonial power. Thus, with the advent of civilization, the ideology and practice of hunting underwent a vast change, no longer being the activity of egalitarian hunter-gathering societies but an assertion of hierarchy and inequality. Indeed, during the colonial era, throughout the world, the true hunting aboriginals (Bushmen, Aborigines, Native Americans) were hunted ruthlessly by the colonizers.
Since the advent of agricultural and, even more so, industrial civilization, hunting has been a marginal part of human life, except within the communities that continued the hunter-gatherer way of life. It has become in civilized societies a pursuit of pleasure, status and prestige; in the Middle Ages, hunting was a royal and aristocratic prerogative. Hunting was one way amongst many of asserting hierarchy and social inequality. Rulers rode on horseback, hunted and waged war. Peasants labored in the fields, went on foot and paid taxes. Rulers ate meat (of all kinds) whereas the ruled ate bread. In the colonial era, hunting was an assertion of colonial power. Thus, with the advent of civilization, the ideology and practice of hunting underwent a vast change, no longer being the activity of egalitarian hunter-gathering societies but an assertion of hierarchy and inequality. Indeed, during the colonial era, throughout the world, the true hunting aboriginals (Bushmen, Aborigines, Native Americans) were hunted ruthlessly by the colonizers.